Tag: Meteorology

Ask Me Anything–Most Memorable Storm

I spent hours on the air showing the radar, seeing the back end of the system and saying the storm would soon be out of the state. I did that through nine or ten additional inches of snow!

I’m currently answering all your questions. Read more about it here.

Eric asks, “Geoff, what storm in CT was the most memorable for you?”

Eric, you’d think it would be Hurricane Gloria. Maybe it should be. It helped establish a reputation for service in a tough situation. People saw me on-the-air for 24 hours straight.

Instead my most memorable was a blown forecast.

It happened well over twenty years ago. It was a snowstorm that wouldn’t end! I spent hours on the air showing the radar, seeing the back end of the system and saying the storm would soon be out of the state. I did that through nine or ten additional inches of snow!

As I would later understand the error in forecasting was mine. We had less guidance then, but I should have known. I’ve been through many similar storms since and understand the dynamics much better. In fact we had a similar storm this winter which was forecast well (though with some trepidation).

So, why is this one so memorable? It was the first storm where I was wrong and was punished by viewers. It took a few years before the ill will I acquired from that episode wore off. It was awful.

No one wants to get the grief I got over that one snowstorm. I certainly don’t.

What this storm did was help me understand how my work is being used. It was a lesson more forcefully learned in this storm than Gloria where I mostly got kudos.

It’s tough to explain because my attitude had never been cavalier. It just made me much more conscious of the utility of my work and the impact of my words. Twenty plus years later I think of that storm every winter and how to avoid a similar forecast disaster.

From time-to-time I’ll still blow a forecast. This past winter had a glaring example. It’s unavoidable when you’re predicting the future.

If you lived in my shoes you’d know how hard I work to avoid that. I’m not trying to set myself apart. I can’t believe anyone who does what I do feels any different.

There’s no upside to being wrong.

The Thing That Fell On Ray Gambardellas’s Roof

Inside a cardboard box that looks like it should be holding pork fried rice sits a Styrofoam case. The case holds the sensors and brains.

Ray Gambardella left a voicemail message for me this morning. He had something he thought would interest me. A weather balloon had come crashing down on his roof!

OK–maybe that’s a little overdone. It parachuted down. Ray still had to fetch it off the roof.

I picked it up this afternoon. It is a combination of new and old tech and it stunk of sulfur. More on that later.

Every day at 00Z and 12Z (corresponding to 8:00 PM and 8:00 AM EDT) weather stations around the world launch radiosondes. They are carried aloft by large helium balloons.

As the balloons go higher-and-higher the atmosphere around them becomes less dense. The balloon expands in size until finally it bursts! Those are the shredded remains of the balloon in the photo on the left.

I called the Weather Service Office in Albany where Ray’s balloon had been launched. The meteorologist there said the balloons typically went well above 50,000 ft. At that altitude 90% or more of the Earth’s atmosphere is below the balloon!

The science is contained in the more sophisticated instrument package that is tethered to the balloon. Ray’s was a Mark IIA Microsonde made by Lockheed Martin. Though Lockheed Martin is a major US defense contractor the sonde itself is assembled in Mexico.

Whether that should or shouldn’t irk me–it did.

Inside a cardboard box that looks like it should be holding pork fried rice sits a Styrofoam case. The case holds the sensors and brains. This radiosonde has instruments to measure temperature, moisture, pressure and ozone plus it can derive wind velocity and direction. The data plus GPS coordinates are transmitted back to ground via a radio data link.

Before the balloon is launched a wet cell battery gets filled with water. The chemical reaction that produces the battery’s electricity also produces the sulfuric stink that’s tough to miss as you approach the balloon.

The results of this upper air sounding are usually charted as a Skew-T Plot. As part of my meteorological training I used to do these by hand on a giant plastic sheet. They’re an excellent way to visualize the atmosphere above a singe point.

Though satellites and other remote sensing methods can probe the atmosphere upper air soundings from radiosondes continue to be used because they work! Their data is heavily integrated into the computer forecast models I often talk about on TV.

It’s amazing how much we owe to something that looks like it should be carrying Chinese food!

Science Friday’s One Sided Global Warming Debate

This was the equivalent of inviting Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo to debate whether Churchill was a statesman!

The radio was on in the bathroom as I got ready for work this afternoon. It was Ira Flatow and Science Friday on NPR. I’m a regular listener. I’ve even written to Ira asking if I might fill-in when he’s on vacation–a request never answered.

But I digress.

As I listened this afternoon I steamed. The topic was “Weathercasters and Climate Change.” The panel was Ira and three proponents of the theory that links humans to global warming. There were no on-camera/on-mic meteorologists. No skeptics! Only adherents.

This was the equivalent of inviting Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo to debate whether Churchill was a statesman!

Hello? Where’s the balance?

If you’ve read this blog any length of time you know I’m one of those meteorologists today’s panelists were scorning. That might be a surprise because my political leanings, how I feel about our environment and my thoughts on our dependence on foreign sources of fossil fuel are decidedly liberal and environmentally oriented. I don’t fit the anti-global warming mold.

Among my non-meteorologist friends I’m the outlier. Most of my forecaster friends, who run the political spectrum from right-to-left, agree with me.

“How can you feel that way?” is a question I’ve been asked more than once. It’s always asked with disdain by a person who has the Earth’s best interests at heart.

It begins with my inherent mistrust of any long range computer modeling. I use models all the time and always with some trepidation. Without computer modeling forecasts would be back where forecasts were in the fifties! Weather prediction is much more accurate now and having computers do much of the heavy lifting is one reason why.

As computer models crunch the numbers they use their earlier forecasts as a basis for later ones. Over time it’s a forecast of a forecast of a forecast. Errors thrown in early in the process, even small errors, multiply through time.

There are surely errors also introduced early on in global climate modeling. The atmosphere is incredibly complex. The models must take shortcuts. That’s not a dig. The numbers are just too large without taking some assumptions.

For instance, let’s say it warms up a little. Now more moisture is evaporated into the atmosphere where it can trap additional heat. The additional moisture also leads to additional clouds. The clouds have a high albedo and reflect some incoming solar radiation back into space which off course leads to cooling.

How much warming? How much cooling? No one knows for certain. Maybe the forecasts are mostly right, but as I said small errors multiple over time.

I can’t trust my models more than a few days out and the ones I use manipulate a more dense grid of observations with shorter time steps! I certainly don’t trust the global models that run over periods of years.

There’s one more little problem that makes me instantly suspicious the whole global warming tumult has become too politicized. Advocates of human induced global warming theories only talk about potential negative impacts. For every inch of a Pacific Island destroyed by rising water how many people living in more temperate climates will survive longer because they’re no longer subjected to the brutality of extreme winter? I’ve never heard that discussed. In real science we should hear everything good and bad.

The global warming advocates say the science is done. I’m not so sure.

Socially it would be easier for me to buy into the conventional wisdom that we humans are destroying our planet. I just can’t. Science says when I have doubts I must raise questions.

A Storm Unlike Any Other

I called and told him I was confused because I’d never seen this particular setup before. Neither had he!

dot greenwich camera.jpgEarlier tonight I took a quick look at one of the CT DOT traffic cameras on I-95 and gasped. The camera was in Greenwich-adjacent to the New York State line. While the rest of Connecticut was seeing moderate to heavy rain with temperatures mostly in the 40&#176s Greenwich had limited visibility with heavy snow. The snow had begun to accumulate!

dot westport camera.jpgA few miles up the road in Stamford there was nothing but rain! Even now, hours later, only the communities in Lower Fairfield are seeing the snow stick.

In retrospect the Greenwich blitz doesn’t change my forecast. It was scary to see–sure. The weather had done a rapid about face. It was all part of the forecast, but it happened so quickly and with such fury I was originally taken aback.

Let me qualify this because it’s easy to lose sight of what I’m talking about.

Something’s been falling from the sky since early Tuesday. One storm came and went. This is Part B of Storm 2. However, this unnamed¹ winter storm is so unusual scholarly papers will be written about it!

Thursday while Atlantic City was seeing snow Albany, NY was getting rain. Friday morning New Haven, CT will see snow while Bangor, ME gets the rain! Crazy.

90fbw.gifThe barometer is so low it’s approaching the range usually seen in hurricanes and tropical storms. We get pressure readings this low every decade or so.
Tonight, as the wind in New London shifted from east to southwest the temperature dropped 9&#176 in one hour! Cold air advection from the southwest! Isn’t that where warm air comes from?

Seriously–that’s nuts.

I called my weather colleague Dr. Mel Goldstein this afternoon. I’d developed my forecast but was unsure about one aspect. He’s a great weather historian so I called and told him I was confused because I’d never seen this particular setup before. Neither had he!

My concern was how much warm air would remain and how much water would stay on roads as the snow fell? How would this affect Friday? My guess is a great deal of the storm will just melt as it hits the pavement–not all of it. What does accumulate will be wet and sloppy and very heavy to move.

After Friday I’ll know better how my speculation comports with the real world. I am working totally in a theoretical world right now.
I am exhausted. This week has been a killer. There’s been no forecast where I could let up because they all were jammed with critical information.

Bring on the weekend.

¹ – As long as I’ve been in Connecticut WFSB has been naming storms. It’s probably a good promotional tool for them, but on those occasions when people refer to a storm by the WFSB given name I gag. These are people who also call the Fiesta Bowl the FedEx Fiesta Bowl.

Crunch Time for School

Our 20th wedding anniversary is coming up tomorrow, so I am rushing to finish my school assignments so the day can be free and dedicated to celebrating.

It’s funny, but in the beginning of the school year, Severe Weather was the tough course. Now, it’s Statistical Climatology.

Tonight, doing some homework necessary for a quarterly test, I worked for a half hour on a problem only to realize the data was split between two pages, so I had left half of it out. This problem had dozens of individual little steps. And, after a point, everything became dependent on what you had previously calculated.

When I realized how long it would take to redo everything, I went a little crazy. If only I knew how to do it on a spreadsheet!

I tried getting my friend Bob on Instant Messenger. He’s Mr. Meteorology (actually Dr. Meteorology) and a math wiz. Nothing. So, a quick call to Paul in California who has used spreadsheets for years to do budgets… but never stat work and never using any functions other than add, subtract, multiply and divide. I needed to do square roots and other obscure functions.

As I was hearing about Paul’s limitations, Bob answered the IM call. I hung up on Paul and phoned Bob. In two minutes I had accomplished as much as I had before I discovered my error earlier!

I don’t want to sound like George HW Bush at that Grocery Convention a few years back&#185, but I have no experience with spreadsheets. They were, after all, the first ‘killer app’ for computers – beginning with Visicalc. I should have a working knowledge.

It is astounding what I was able to do, accurately, and in very short order. And, to do the simple stuff was fairly easy. I should be able to go back without trouble.

I am using the spreadsheet built into OpenOffice.org, which is a Microsoft Office look alike/work alike… and it’s FREE! I would like OpenOffice.org more if it was supported by books. There are dozens of books on Microsoft Office but hardly anything to buy on OpenOffice.org.

With the homework now finished, tomorrow I can take my tests (actually, later today).

&#185Today, for instance, [Bush] emerged from 11 years in Washington’s choicest executive mansions to confront the modern supermarket.

Visiting the exhibition hall of the National Grocers Association convention here, Mr. Bush lingered at the mock-up of a checkout lane. He signed his name on an electronic pad used to detect check forgeries.

“If some guy came in and spelled George Bush differently, could you catch it?” the President asked. “Yes,” he was told, and he shook his head in wonder.

Then he grabbed a quart of milk, a light bulb and a bag of candy and ran them over an electronic scanner. The look of wonder flickered across his face again as he saw the item and price registered on the cash register screen.

“This is for checking out?” asked Mr. Bush. “I just took a tour through the exhibits here,” he told the grocers later. “Amazed by some of the technology.”

Marlin Fitzwater, the White House spokesman, assured reporters that he had seen the President in a grocery store. A year or so ago. In Kennebunkport.

Some grocery stores began using electronic scanners as early as 1976, and the devices have been in general use in American supermarkets for a decade.

From The New York Times